


live every need

by nobodysusername



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x20 coda, Coda, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Fix-It, M/M, Spoilers for Carry On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27653906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nobodysusername/pseuds/nobodysusername
Summary: “Cas, you died—yousacrificed yourself—forthis?” Dean doesn’t mean to sound as incredulous as he does, but it’s hard to keep the disbelieving bite from his tone. The situation simply doesn’t leave room for any other kind of reaction. It’s completely ludicrous: it makes no damn sense.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 40





	live every need

“Cas, you died—you _sacrificed yourself_ —for _this_?” Dean doesn’t mean to sound as incredulous as he does, but it’s hard to keep the disbelieving bite from his tone. The situation simply doesn’t leave room for any other kind of reaction. It’s completely ludicrous: it makes no damn sense.

“Dean,” Cas says. It’s placating, so much packed into that one word, his name. It has the intended effect, and Dean waits for Cas to speak his mind, albeit reluctantly. “Dean,” Cas repeats, this time sounding more resigned. Dean feels silently vindicated. “I know it’s not ideal. And so does Jack. We’re—working on it.”

“You’re ‘working on it’?” Dean echoes, his tone safely outside the realm of credulity. “Well, I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but so far this is pretty fucking far from promising.”

He stalks back towards the porch, away from Cas and Baby. Bobby’s still sitting there, gazing emptily at the surrounding landscape.

“Dean, wait,” Cas says, following Dean. That gives Dean pause, and he’s suddenly jolted by the memory of how they’d parted on Earth.

“I’m sorry,” Dean sighs, softening. The fight goes out of him along with his exhale. “Cas, listen.” Dean turns towards Cas and steels himself mentally. “We are gonna talk about. Everything. I swear. But for now—it’s just all too much.” He internally winces at how bad it sounds, hating himself for it and because of how much he now knows it must hurt Cas to hear. But it’s true, now just isn’t the time. It can’t be.

“It’s okay, Dean.” Cas says it with such care and conviction that Dean knows he means it even though it’s nearly unfathomable. Cas places a hand on Dean’s shoulder—Dean privately revels in the familiar touch, feeling guilty as he does so.

“We’ll fix everything,” Cas says reassuringly, meeting Dean’s eyes. His gaze is intent and painfully earnest, the same open expression with which he’s always looked at Dean, and the intensity forces Dean to look away.

“I know, Cas, but I’d like that to be sooner, rather than later. I’d like to get things right before Sam goes geriatric—you’ve seen _Inception_ , we wanna avoid that outcome.”

“Jack is still getting a handle on things, but obviously this is his top priority,” Cas answers. He lifts his chin slightly and it’s only after a moment that Dean realizes he’s gesturing for them to join Bobby on the porch. Obediently, Dean turns and continues in that direction. 

“I’m just kind of confused,” Dean says, which is putting it mildly. “Jack is God, right? So he’s omniscient. He shouldn’t need a three month trial period; he should have had a lock on everything from the get-go.”

“Jack isn’t God,” Cas says. He says it patiently but in a way that suggests this fact should be obvious, though to Dean it certainly is not.

“Then what is he, exactly?” Dean asks as they ascend the stops. Bobby blinks out of his reverie as they rejoin him.

“Hello, Bobby,” Cas says.

“Castiel,” Bobby answers with a cursory nod. 

Cas turns to Dean. “We don’t know what Jack is, but it’s clear he’s not working with the same faculties that had been at Chuck’s disposal. Hence everything ‘going haywire,’ as you might put it.” Cas makes air quotes as he speaks, and the gesture causes something in Dean’s chest to feel tight.

“We’re going inside now, Bobby,” Dean says as he rather unceremoniously flings open the door to The Roadhouse.

Bobby gives another gruff nod as Dean passes, entering the building. Dean hears him say “Have fun in there, boys” as Cas shuts the door. 

“If they’re all like that, I’d rather avoid anyone else,” Dean mutters as they head towards the back of the building. 

“Of course,” Cas answers. “I’ve removed them all from the vicinity.”

“It’s a bit like a Holodeck,” Dean says thoughtfully they reach the back of The Roadhouse. Dean opens the backdoor and gestures for Cas to go first. It’s a convincing enough simulacrum of Bobby, after all.

“ _Star Trek_ ,” Cas muses. “I think Jack would have benefited from that show. I’m not sure how necessary multiple viewings of _The Lost Boys_ was to his formation.”

“Below the belt, Cas,” Dean answers warningly, but it’s funny and he can’t help but smile. “I can’t believe we died worse than we lived.”

“It’s perfectly believable in the context of everything we’ve endured,” Castiel says seriously.

“Well, sue me for not expecting to get got by a vampire-mime,” Dean says. Behind the roadhouse, the forest is dense and dark, and Dean can sense the raw materiality of it. Far less craftsmanship here than out front, the lines are rushed and sloppy, the outline all but forgotten.

“Maybe we should have signed Jack up for art class,” Dean quips. Cas says nothing, only staring at the vast unkempt nature before them.

“What do you see?” Cas asks.

Dean looks at Cas incredulously again, but quickly schools his expression. Cas wouldn’t ask without a reason. “A forest straight out of a German fairytale. Why? What do _you_ see?”

Cas is still staring out into the forest, squinting as if looking for something. “I don’t have the necessary words in any human language to convey to you what I see,” he answers mildly. “It’s the primordial stuff of all universes. Scarcely hewn, practically untouched.”

“The clay that built Adam, huh.” Dean takes a step toward it, all the more eager to get the show on the road now that the conversation has tilted into the macrocosmic. “Not really sure I understand what we’re gonna get from that,” he adds, talking over Cas’s protests. He ventures forth into the wood and Cas reluctantly follows.

“We only need to find some completely virgin material from which I’ll be able to form our own universe, and hopefully close the divergence.” Cas explains. “Please watch where you step, Dean.”

“You’re just saying words, Cas,” Dean says, careful to stay a few feet ahead. He needs this slight distance.

“It’s really not easy to explain this in terms you would understand, Dean,” Cas says.

Dean rolls his eyes at that. He kicks at some thick underbrush and pushes thick branches away as he pushes forward into the thicket. “Try me,” he tells Cas, defiant.

“Alright, fine,” Cas says, petulant. Dean smiles at that but refuses to look back. It still hurts to face Cas fully, knowing how things had ended and with the other elephant still very much in the room. “Putting it in terms of the visual scenario you and Jack have provided, we are in this forest to find a particular tree, which will allow us to build a particular boat, on which we can sail back to the moment when Jack downgraded God, which will be—once again in analogical terms—like sewing a loop to stitch fabric. It will close the anomalous hole into which your timeline accidentally slipped, and this time you will hopefully avoid self-impalement on a rusted nail.” Cas says that last bit with a particularly sardonic bite, and Dean gets the feeling that there’s an unspoken threat buried in his words. Fair enough.

“I really am sorry,” Dean says softly, still not looking at Cas. The forest has taken no time to devour them, the overgrowth of nature blocking out light. Dean feels more like he’s swimming in some dark, viscous ocean than hacking through a primordial forest. It’s strange and makes no sense, but Dean supposes that’s nothing new.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Cas answers, his voice right in Dean’s ear. Dean ducks away and starts hacking at the branches more urgently, determined to maintain a measure of distance between them. Even as he does so, part of him resists: he wants to feel Cas in his personal space, wants to feel Cas place his hand on Dean’s back as they move practically in tandem, a single motion instead of two. But he can’t do that, not when things are like this. And if he stays dead, and it was all pointless, then he’ll have all of eternity to make things right between him and Cas.

Somehow this thought doesn’t comfort him.

They continue in silence for some time, Dean thwacking branches out of his way with his hands and forearms, Cas dispelling the plants through strange hand gestures that must be much more interesting from the perspective of a wavelength of celestial intent or whatever Cas actually is up here.

“There,” Cas says, and Dean knows without glancing back that he’s pointing somewhere. Dean refuses to check where Cas is indicating, instead scanning the horizon himself until he sees what Cas must be noticing. A silver tree, vast and magnificent and almost luminescent. Distant enough not to be obvious but nonetheless visible when observed.

The gnarled mess of forest around them has gotten more forgiving, and it takes surprisingly little time for them to reach it. Dean’s feeling better already, seeing how manageable this whole quest has been, but he didn’t survive death however many times without learning a few lessons in humility along the way, so he knows better than to feel triumphant yet. It’s entirely possible that this quest is itself an elaborate introduction to Dean’s afterlife after death. The more Dean strays into his thoughts of possible explanations, the more disturbed he feels, and Cas must sense his silent panic because he puts a hand on Dean’s bicep. Dean starts, once again both relieved and electrified by the touch.

“I am not the conjuration of a God.” Cas says, his voice low and firm. His tone has a dangerous edge to it, a gesture toward anger, almost, which both excites and scares Dean. “I am just as ‘in the lurch’ as you,” he continues (Dean can hear the air quotes even though Cas doesn’t physically make them). “We are resorting to this because Jack can’t handle a project this _delicate_ while also managing everything _else_.” Everything else being, presumably, the continuous maintenance of every universe, ever. It makes Dean feel sort of special that he could be enough to distract Jack from successfully juggling all of _that_ , because that seems ludicrous based on optics. And it reaffirms the maxim Dean has chosen to believe since arriving in this apparent Heaven: Cas is his compass.

Dean had played his part with Bobby, but when the sheen of absurdity hadn’t worn off even after the piss-tasting beer, he’d decided to trust his gut. The stakes were awfully low if he was wrong, after all, because if he was then this would be Heaven.

It hadn’t taken long for Cas to arrive, though every minute of uncertainty had only furthered Dean’s suspicion. He’d appeared beside Baby, and Dean had already gotten halfway to him before realizing his own apparent abandon. He’d gotten control of himself then, and remembered to be suspicious of Cas the same way he was of Bobby.

Cas hadn’t disappointed him, though. The angel standing beside the Impala was the same one who’d ripped Dean from Hell, and Dean knew this because he could not have dreamed this up, and in fact he didn’t think Jack—even an omniscient Jack—could have done so either. Cas was so particular, so idiosyncratically his own thing, that he was uniquely inimitable. God—Chuck—had even said as much, more or less. Maybe not as nicely.

“It’s a mess, you shouldn’t have died, everything’s under construction,” Cas had said once Dean had gotten close enough. Three short successive statements, a tidy recitation like a prayer or a to-do list. Dean believed it because it made sense in a way that nothing else had since he’d died—hell, since before then, even.

And then Cas had explained, in the blunt but painstaking way he does, that the other cosmic realms had disintegrated and reconstituted in a convoluted mixtures, some compensatory crisis in exchange for Earth’s intactness. The long labor Jack has ahead of him, like sorting grains of salt in the ocean.

And Dean could tell from the way Cas explained that he’d been expecting this, that he’d had some inkling of Jack’s future impact on the cosmos—consciously or not. Which meant Cas had let himself die for Dean knowing also that his afterlife self could have gotten ripped up and blended along with all the others, lost to the ether until Jack had finished his sorting and careful restitching.

They’ve now reached the tree, and its trunk has a circumference greater than Dean’s wingspan. It’s not the kind of tree you can snap with bare hands, or even regular tools.

“Here,” Cas says. He draws an angel blade from the sleeve of his trench coat and offers it to Dean.

“I’m going to carve _this_ ,” he glances pointedly at the massive tree, “with _that_?” He looks at the blade in Cas’s hand, remembers the time Lucifer had stabbed Cas with one. He blinks and then meets the angel’s unimpressed gaze. “What?”

“I do not control the way this place is presented to you,” he says simply. “I have given you a tool that will be perfectly adequate. It’s part of me.”

Part of him, huh. “’Perfectly adequate,’ Cas?” Dean asks, raising his eyebrows as he takes the blade. He steps closer to the trunk and braces himself as though gearing for a knife fight. “You need to get some self-confidence, buddy.” After he says it his words catch up to him, and his stomach drops instantly with guilt. He wants to fix it all now, to say the right words and look directly at Cas without breaking the stare, but he overcomes the impulse and anxiously jabs the blade into the tree, like a needle into a pincushion.

Cas doesn’t react, though, either unfazed or so used to this offhand treatment that he doesn’t notice. He stays silent, and Dean can feel him watching as he hacks futilely at the tough bark of the silver tree.

“A little help?” Dean snipes finally after a few tense minutes of this. He hazards a glance back at Cas, who extends his hand. Dean hands him the blade and steps back, clearing space for him to work.

Cas drives the blade into the tree in a single fluid sweep of his arm, and the groan of the tree strains Dean’s ears for a moment as it shudders, splintering.

“Now what, we bring this whole damn tree to a river? Is that it?” Dean is trying to keep the incredulity to a minimum, he really is, but the fact that after forty years of the hunter life he’s still encountering new supernatural problems is just difficult to accept some days.

“If what you picture is a river, I suppose,” Cas says. “I can carry the tree.” This seems a physical impossibility to Dean, who iss nonetheless curious to see what this would look like. He doesn’t argue.

Cas does indeed carry the tree, though this really means he drags it by its upper branches as if drawing a sled through a snowy hill. Other trees seem to make way for their felled brother, so there’s very little road-clearing for Dean to do. They trudge on in awkward silence. Dean is tempted to explain himself, to justify his volume-speaking silence, but he’s terrified that doing so will shatter it all.

Cas seems disinterested in small talk, reticent and serious. Dean occasionally steals glances at him as they trudge forth, awestruck by his sharp profile and somber expression. There’s something that shines through in Cas’s expressions, the divine seeping through its human confines, and it never seems clearer to Dean than when he beholds his friend in profile.

The thick forest slowly gives way to a swampier atmosphere until they are wading in something thick and dark and not at all like water.

“We’re sailing down this river of sludge on that tree?” Dean asks. Cas grimaces. “Or whatever the cosmic equivalent of that is,” Dean adds. “I don’t know what this looks like with God goggles, please forgive me.”

“You’re so annoying,” Cas mutters darkly. This catches Dean by surprise, and he stares at Cas in stupefaction for a brief moment. Cas catches him staring and smirks, clearly pleased with himself.

Dean smiles back, unable to help it. “Alright, maybe I am,” he concurs.

They’ve waded so far into the sludge that it reaches Dean’s chin, wet—cold and hot at once: Dean imagines lava would feel something like this. Cas is still dragging the tree alongside them, a tremendous, dimly glowing raft. Drifting along the surface of the sludge river, it looks to Dean like hurricane wreckage.

“Get on the tree,” Cas commands. Dean considers talking back, but thinks better of it, heaving himself unceremoniously up onto the trunk. It dips further into the current with his weight, but remains on the surface. He stares at the back of Cas’s head, bobbing slightly as he tugs the tree forward with each step in the sludge. Dean can tell by this movement that the river liquid is thinning, flowing more loosely as they continue.

“Are you coming with me?” Dean asks after another long while of silence. He’s afraid to hear the answer.

“No, I’m only here to fling you over the edge of reality,” Cas says. He sounds resigned, worn down by everything, and Dean suddenly wants to hug him the way they’d normally hugged after every unjust separation.

“But I’ll see you, Cas,” Dean presses, because even though they’d hashed it out before he wants to be reassured once more. “Right?”

“We’re trying to thread the eye of a needle in a haystack the size of the universe,” Cas answers drily. “But if all goes according to plan, there are very few permutations that involve my permanent demise.”

That non-zero statistic doesn’t sound too good, so Dean ignores it. “Hey,” he says. Cas glances back at him. “I can’t wait to see you again.” He means to play it a little joking, a little offhand, to soften the underlying earnestness, but it comes out painfully sincere.

Cas smiles at him, an expression that still seems sad to Dean. He says nothing in response, only turns back ahead in order to keep guiding them toward infinity (or something like that).

The river changes only gradually for a long time, but then suddenly gives way to violent rapids. Cas is battered by illogically arrayed jettisons of water (or whatever it is, though now it is thin and clear), but still battles forward with his handles on a branch, his trench coat billowing behind him like a khaki fabric oil spill.

“We’re almost there,” Cas informs Dean, shouting to be heard over the torrent of water.

“Kinda figured,” Dean shouts back. He’s about to ask what’s next, then, but before he can do so Cas disappears from sight, flung underwater by the rapids. Dean scrambles forward and manages to grab Cas’s trench coat as the tree stirs violently in the rushing water. He wrests Cas from the water and heaves him up onto the trunk until he’s draped over it like a towel, coughing and spitting water.

“You should not have done that, Dean,” Cas says warningly once he’s finished coughing. He wipes his mouth with the back of his palm. He looks wrung out, not unlike the way he’d looked when releasing the Leviathan, though Dean isn’t sure why he thinks of that now. Just one of many ways Dean had made Cas a fuck up, he supposes.

“Too late now,” Dean answers, fake cheerful. And indeed it is too late, for here they come upon the edge of the river, and they’re flung gracelessly off of the edge and into what Dean, just as he careens into it, realizes must be pure, formless nothing.

*

He sputters back to life still impaled on a nail in a barn, staggered breathing and a metal protrusion lacing several vitals. Reliving his death isn’t exactly what he’d expected to return for, and this certainly doesn’t seem like a good sign.

Sam is crying, holding Dean’s face, and Dean sort of just feels like a sausage on a skewer. Dying has lost its luster now that it’s an exact replay, though Dean still plays his part because there’s no way not to. Just as he starts to unwillingly hobble toward the light at the end of the tunnel, a flash of real-world light brilliantly illuminates the barn. Lightbulbs explode, sending showers of sparks. Dean feels the blood puddling in his lungs; he thinks of Cas, of how when they’d first met Dean had stabbed him in the chest.

Sam holds Dean more tightly, and Dean—closing his eyes now, impossibly tired—feels like it’s hastening the process, because he’s being jostled on the nail like a fish on a hook, but then Sam draws him further forward and Dean realizes he’s being pulled off the rebar. He hadn’t been alive for that last time, he’s certain, because it feels like the kind of thing Alistair would have done to him, and he’s certain he would have remembered this pain.

He chokes a little on blood, and a mouthful of it forces past his lips. The taste and the smell make his head hurt. Rust and salt, that familiar red wetness.

Sam doesn’t let him go, only collapses under him until they’re both kneeling inelegantly in the hay. Something brushes Dean’s forehead, a gently, white-hot caress, and then he’s been knitted completely together.

Dean can still hear Sam breathing shakily, feels him tightly clutching Dean as if worried he’ll dissipate. Dean squeezes Sammy back, _I’m alive, it’s alright_ , surging at once with relief and terror. He opens his eyes and finds a hand hovering over him, benediction.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says. Lightbulbs are still flashing and exploding above them, and Dean sees Cas’s outstretched wings in silhouette against the barn wall.

Dean exhales unsteadily, relief and sheer terror at once. “I missed you,” he says after a beat. He huffs out a surprised laugh, which along with Dean’s words startles Sam enough that he pulls away, breaking the tight embrace. He stares at Dean as though verifying he’s real, still holding him up like he might collapse. Cas is still staring intently at him, but Dean breaks his gaze to look at his brother. “Hiya, Sammy,” he grins. Not today, vampire mimes. He feels on top of the world—on top of the universe.

“Dean,” Sam breathes, relieved. He stands, pulling Dean up with him by sheer force of will, and then they’re just three guys standing together in a barn.

Sam notices Cas, then, and looks awestruck. “Cas,” he says, tone wondering. “How did you—?”

“Jack,” Cas says. He sounds like a proud father, and Dean grins stupidly again. “But this is his last act for us,” he adds, turning serious. “From now on, no script doctor.”

“Got it, understood.” Sam nods, furrowing his brow. “Free will, huh,” he says. He looks like he’s going to say more, but one glance between Dean and Cas is enough of a signal for him to take his leave. “I’m gonna, uh,” he says. “Warm up the car,” he ends stupidly, already backing away. “Don’t ever do that again,” he adds sternly to Dean, swiping at his eyes as he retreats. Then he turns and quickly strides the rest of the way out, leaving Dean and Castiel alone in the barn.

“Cas,” Dean breathes. He takes a step closer, and Cas takes a step back. This takes Dean by surprise: he realizes then that this is the first time he’s ever seen Cas shy away from him. Usually so quick to step forward, to meet him in the middle.

“Dean,” Cas says by way of response. He’s looking at Dean uncertainly, looking terrified. Dean remembers the expression he’d had the night Dean had first tried to get Cas laid. Dean was so stupid then.

“Cas,” Dean repeats, firmly this time. “You can have me. You do have me. I—I love you.”

Dean takes another step forward, takes Cas’s hand before he can pull it away. He looks at Cas, imploring. Cas brings his hands to Dean’s face, drawing their faces together until there’s no space between them. They stand like that, silently communing, just at the edge of a kiss for several aching moments, and then Cas closes the gap completely, his lips meeting Dean’s.

When they part, he says, “I won’t let you get to Heaven before Jack’s finished fixing it.”

Dean laughs, pulling Cas into a hug. “Screw Heaven,” he agrees. “I’ve got everything I need right here.” 

**Author's Note:**

> is this good? no. is it better than 15x20? yeah. press F to pay respects


End file.
